Not Another Friendship's Day

Last Sunday was a disaster. No, it wasn’t because I was forced to study. No, it wasn’t because I couldn’t play cricket due to a backache. It was because of a day known as friendship’s day.The day I heard "Dosti waale" songs on the radio.The day I received 20 SMSes .The SMSes weren’t really original. They were typically typical. Reading them, I felt like I was at this Archies shop checking out greeting cards. Sample this:
“True friends are like flowers in the garden of life”

“True friends help you in your hour of need”

“Friends are toilet cleaning fluids of a toilet called life”

Sorry, I made up the last one. But does it really matter? I really value all my friends and well wishers but I completely detest these greeting-card-type SMSes. These SMSes make me puke till eternity. There is no need to send such SMSes which are not even written by you (I doubt whether anyone even reads them before forwarding). Friendship’s day is so overhyped. Not as overhyped as Valentine’s Day though and that’s a good thing.

You must have heard it before but I’ll say it again: Friendship’s day is a marketing gimmick. While you are busy sending SMSes , greeting cards and all the other possible things, some people are laughing their way to their banks. So what’s next, mr.money minters? Happy Mama’s day, happy Chachi’s day, happy Uncle and Aunty’s day, happy Girlfriend’s day or happy Ex-Girlfriend’s day?

Last but not the least, I’ll repeat what many have said. Finding true friends is as hard as finding aliens on the earth. Wait a minute! Didn’t I meet Jaadoo(of Koi Mil Gayaa fame) at a sprawling mall 4 years ago? I did. Moral of the story? True friends can be found. Just look around. He might be hanging out near your home. He might be at another corner of your city in hope of a true friend. Just look around because you never know! A stranger today might turn into someone important tomorrow.TC!

Jealousy

The feeling which plagued my mind during my childhood. The feeling which had broken me completely. The feeling which I experienced when I lost a random competition. The feeling I experienced when I felt inferior to the people around me.

Beware of jealously, for it causes a lot of problems. Love turns into hate. Hate turns into anger. Anger turned into an outburst and outburst turned into guilt. That guilt is of a dangerous kind. I want to completely resist this feeling. If there is some sort of vaccination against this feeling, then I would use it. When jealously hits, friends turn into foes, blood brothers turn into strangers and love turns into hate. The feeling gets to you. It makes you insane. Blood runs faster. The world turns chaotic and the chaos is spread by no one but you. The optimism goes out of sight. Pessimism flows like an endless stream.

So, when that feeling comes back again, I just close my eyes and concentrate on the beautiful sound of silence. Let this feeling pass away.

JEALOUSLY, GET LOST!

Advertising

Advertising is something that I just can't escape. Whether I step my foot in a train, a bus or any remote place you could think of. I step in a train and voila!I witness advertisements from underwears to sex clinics , from haldiram ki bhujia to 100% placement guarantee institutes. I haven’t seen so much diversity in any other place as far as advertising is concerned. Enter a bus and voila!I see brand new seats with Tata Sky advertisements at the back of all the seats. Advertising provides thousands of people with 2 waqt ki roti but to me, it provides a lot of things. It provides amusement, anger and embarrassment and whether I like it or not, I have to bear with it.
Advertisements irritate me after every 10 minutes while watching my favourite sitcom on TV. Sure some are really funny and are a treat to watch again and again. Teleshopping ads just crack me up. They can give any TV program a run for their TRP's. Unfortunately, there are only a handful of them. I get terribly irritated watching ads of similar concepts. Soaps, toothpastes, washing powders come under this category. Almost all of them have an extra ingredient which apparently works wonders. So the toothpaste I use has extra salts which make my teeth whiter and the soap I use has certain chemicals which will make my skin fair. Not that I desire such a skin.
Sometimes, TV ads just disgust me. I get disgusted whenever I see a toilet cleaning ad(Harpic!) on the TV while I'm eating my dinner!
Some ads are ingrained in my brain(aap PSPO nahi jaantey?). Sometimes ,I get embarrassed whenever I'm watching TV with my family and suddenly, out of nowhere, a condom ad comes up! The only thing on my mind after that ,is to change the channel!
There are some ads I just can't understand(don't be a balti! , yeh toh badaa toing hai) and won't be able to understand and the countless number of "guy impresses girl because guy uses a xyz soap or a xyz hair gel or yada,yada..." type ads are the ads I completely hate.
The informative ads on Doordarshan are some of the ads that must be commended for creating an awareness about different social issues although, it would have been much better had it been made in a better way. They all look ancient now and bad actors don’t really help their cause.

Love it or hate it, the fact is neither I nor you can't escape it. I'm all for anything that creates employment and advertising ain't no exception. So, I'll continue to bear the various advertisements.